Consistent, hot Jalapeños?

I like to make ABTs (similar to DTs I found when I searched.) and am disappointed by the jalapeños I'm finding in the local markets. In a single batch, I find some that are no hotter than bell peppers and others that give me instant hiccups. Another complaint is the size I am now finding. Some are over 6" long. That's not really a good size for making hors d'oeuvres. The last couple times I've purchased japapeños I've gone to Mexican markets in West Chicago hoping for a more authentic and consistent product and I continue to be disappointed.

I understand that there are newer varieties that have been developed that are not nearly as hot as the traditional jalapeño and I'm OK with that. To each, his own. It just seems to me that these are winding up mixed in with hotter peppers by the time they get to the stores.

Is there a strategy I can use to get a more consistent and relatively hot pepper? I suppose what I should do is segregate them as I prepare them and keep them distinct through serving. That would be a lot of trouble.

thanks,
hank

Carry a knife with you at all times, and when confronted with jalapenos, make sacrifice of one to test their strength. Or just take a bite out of one surreptitiously. Be sly, and the stock boys will never know.

Story off my life.
I'm only happy when I grow them.
Burpee's Biker Billy Hybrid has been good success for me.

I think it's just the nature of the beast. Jalapenos have a good deal of variation in heat.

Habibi wrote:Carry a knife with you at all times, and when confronted with jalapenos, make sacrifice of one to test their strength. Or just take a bite out of one surreptitiously. Be sly, and the stock boys will never know.

Won't work. The problem is that in one batch they run from hot to very mild.

JoelF wrote:Story off my life.
I'm only happy when I grow them.
Burpee's Biker Billy Hybrid has been good success for me.

I'm trying "Mucho Nacho" from Jung this year. The variety I grew last year didn't produce well at all.

zoid wrote:I think it's just the nature of the beast. Jalapenos have a good deal of variation in heat.

That could be. I don't recall that problem years ago when pretty much every jalapeño could be counted on for some heat. I do recall that being an issue with whatever my mother-in-law used for chili relleno.

thanks,
hank

HankB wrote:The problem is that in one batch they run from hot to very mild.

I've made hundreds, probably thousands, of ABT or, as I now refer to them, jalapeno submarines, over the years and have noticed distinct dumbing down of heat. One used to be (relatively) assured of scoville punch by sourcing at Mexican markets but that is, as you note, no longer the case. I may have to start mixing minced habanero in with the sausage to accent jalapeno.

Jalapeno Submarines 2.22.12 @ Barn & Company

I'm almost certain I posted the identical query at one time. Vastly varying heat was driving me crazy as I tried to season things appropriately. I was hoping that someone knew a secret---look for smaller ones, darker ones, firmer ones---whatever. But I've found no answer.
We grew our own last year from a plant bought on impulse from Treasure Island. It produced very nice peppers with medium heat, and being from a single plant, they were consistent. But I've found no answer for buying commercially.

The common wisdom on jalapenos is that the ones with white striations on them (like dots or veiny-looking things) going down the length of the pepper are hotter than the smooth, solid-colored ones with no white blemishes. Supposedly, this is supposed to mean that they are older, and therefore more likely to be spicy. Now whether this is true or not is another story. I've never noticed any correlation, but I've never done any formal tests, either.

Most of what is Posted here is 'Urban Legend'!
The plain fact of the matter is you have Texas A&M to thank.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Mild_Jalape%C3%B1o
The TAM has dumbed down the Jalapeno to where commercial varieties have no heat what so ever.
You have to raise you own. I had a local farmer plant about 50' of Jalapenos for me last summer. Great heat and they were not TAM's.-Dick
BTW Poblanos are now suffering the same fate.

I've also noticed the same things the OP has, namely the inconsistent heat and freakish size of the modern jalapeño. My solution has been to switch to serranos whenever jalapeños are called for. Serranos are suffering the same fate as the jalapeño, namely becoming much larger in size and inconsistent in heat. Because the serranos start off hotter than jalapeños in the first place, you're assured of getting at least a medium sized punch of heat no matter what.

Serranos are the new Jalapenos.

I have to say serranos are my favorites, not too hot but still a good kick and I really prefer the flavor over jalapenos,

I think it's a huge mistake to think that jalepenos are not hot or cannot be hot. I constantly have very hot ones during their season. The key thing to keep in mind, besides the fact that your peppers can come from various cultivars, is that peppers like any agricultural product vary from season to season based on the conditions of that season.

I had an inadvertent opportunity to stage a multi-year field trial with jalapeno chiles over a five-year period, and my experience indicated that plant stress after the chiles have set fruit is a huge determining factor in how hot the fruit will be. Contributors to stress are heat, lack of root space, water variations, and consistent high wind (!). I've been growing chiles for several decades, and by far the hottest jalapenos I've ever grown were those that were cultivated in third-floor window boxes on deck railings with a western exposure, meaning that they got late unobstructed late afternoon sun for several hours, and regular high wind. Jalapenos from the same cell-pack/same reputable nurseries (Chalet and Gethsemane in alternating years), were grown in large terracotta pots, on an east-facing deck, with less late-afternoon sun and wind (meaning more water retention). Soil/slow-release fertilizer were identical. The window-box chiles were so hot as to be nearly inedible, particularly when red-ripe; also, the striations (AKA "corking") were far more prevalent on this group than on the east deck group. The results were consistently the same every summer from 1997 through 2002. Interestingly, the same stress doesn't seem to make poblanos noticiably hotter - it only produces smaller chiles and blossom-end rot, just as similar stressors trigger it in tomatoes.

I have been growing my jalapenos in-ground and in similarly-sized large pots since moving from that properly, and have found no significant heat level differences in the chiles. Seems the combo of high wind, root stress from lack of space, and fast water evaporation from excessive sun exposure are the main stress variables in producing incendiary jalapeno chiles.

Regarding buying reliably hot jalapeno chiles, the best way to go seems to be to patronize Mexican markets, and buy red jalapenos, selecting the corkiest ones available; Marketplace on Oakton carries jalapenos rojos on occasion, as well. I usually buy mine from Michoacan market, on Western Ave. just north of Touhy, which almost always has them in stock.

I've been buying jarred jalapeno peppers La Preferida from the market here for years and years. Hot and mild.

Just dawned on me how in the heck do they make and label the products different, one mild and the other hot?

Oil? or literally use different peppers?

Product is very consistent in terms of hotness from the mild to the hot product.

http://www.lapreferida.com/

kenji,

Take a look at this page from the Burpee catalogue. As you can see, jalapenos come in all shapes, sizes, and heat-level. It's up to the grower to select what they want. Then the packer--like La Preferida--orders different varieties from the growers.

Geo

And, in addition to the TAM jalapeno budrichard mentions above, there's another called "Fooled You" available from Totally Tomatoes. It's apparently named that way because, while it looks like a typical hot jalapeno, it's got no heat.

Geo

I just call the weak jalapeños Hala-yos. No pain.

Oh, and Burpee's Biker Billy seeds have been consistently good for me in the past.

I mentioned this to one of the scientists at New Mexico State's Chile Pepper Institute last spring. She attributed a lot of it to cross pollination with other peppers.

My MIL had the opposite problem. She retained seeds from a prior year's sweet peppers crop for planting the next spring. The original peppers had NO heat. The next year, those peppers were hotter than ANY pepper than I had ever had - worse than haberero. I tried the usual things to temper the heat but none worked. They ended up in the compost pile.

JoelF wrote:I just call the weak jalapeños Hala-yos. No pain.

Oh, and Burpee's Biker Billy seeds have been consistently good for me in the past.

We call the weak ones Jewel-apenos - because I've never found a decent jalapeno in any Jewel.

Are you basing "decent" on the amount of scovilles?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_s ... iderations

kenji wrote:Are you basing "decent" on the amount of scovilles?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_s ... iderations

I'm basing it on that I've never procured a jalapeno from Jewel that was even remotely spicy - they have always been nothing more than the equivalent of small, oblong bell peppers. I understand and accept the variability of relative heat levels among all varieties of chiles but the jalapenos that Jewel sources, IME, have always been consistently bland. I guess it's kind of like Miller Lite - I may not care for the product but am impressed at their ability to reproduce it so consistently.

Not sure what the link to Scoville is supposed to provide.

Kman wrote:
Not sure what the link to Scoville is supposed to provide.

If one clicks the link and sees the chart you'd be able to ascertain a heat level for specific types of peppers. The chart starts jalapeños off at 1000 scovilles. Supposedly jalapeños come in at 1000-10000 scovilles. The chart also lists other species in the same ranges per scoville.

Posted the link cause I found the info interesting.

I'd like to try a Jewels jalapeño and have a bell pepper next to it and see what 1000 scovilles means to my mouth.

There is way more variability to all peppers than that chart implies. I believe the only take-away from a chart like that is the general relative spiciest of 1 pepper to another.

As noted here previously, growing conditions greatly influence chile heat. The more stress the plant has (wind, excessive heat, fluctuations in moisture, etc.), the hotter the chiles the plant produces - and the same plant produces chiles of variable heat during the same growing season as the conditions change. The hottest Jalapeño chiles I've grown to date came from plants grown in window boxes with a western exposure, three storeys up - hot sun, wind, wildly fluctuating moisture levels all at once, the hat trick of heat production. None of that insipid grassiness, just blast-furnace heat, particularly in the ones I let ripen to red. Satan's own rajas.

I thought of this thread when I found myself at the Jewel('s) on Harlem & Foster.
I bought a half dozen jalas just to try and grilled them the other night.
Heatwise, these don't slouch and I'll put them above average.
They're large, meaty, the membrane isn't huge, bright color..
Actually, they're really good jalapenos.